“That makes two of us.”
I feel we’re each standing a good hundred feet from the real subject. I have to move us closer.
“Is it over now? With the two of you?”
“Yes. So I guess you got what you wanted.”
“That’s an awful way to put it,” I say. “Don’t you want it, too?”
“Yes. But not like that. Not in front of everybody like that.”
I reach up to touch her face, but she flinches. I lower my hand.
“You’re free of him,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. I’ve said yet another thing wrong.
“I forget how little you know about these things,” she says. “I forget how inexperienced you are. I’m not free of him, A. Just because you break up with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re free of him. I’m still attached to Justin in a hundred different ways. We’re just not dating anymore. It’s going to take me years to be free of him.”
But at least you’ve started, I want to say. At least you’ve cut that one attachment. I remain silent, though. This might be what she knows, but it’s not what she wants to hear.
“Should I have gone to Hawaii?” I ask.
She softens to me then. It’s such an absurd question, but she knows what I mean.
“No, you shouldn’t have. I want you here.”
“With you?”
“With me. When you can be.”
I want to promise more than that, but I know I can’t.
We both stay there, on our tightrope. Not looking down, but not moving, either.
We use her phone to check the local flights to Hawaii, and when we’re sure there’s no way Michael’s family can get him on a plane, Rhiannon drives me home.
“Tell me more about the girl you were yesterday,” she asks. So I do. And when I’m done, and a sadness fills the car, I decide to tell her about other days, other lives. Happier. I share with her memories of being sung to sleep, memories of meeting elephants at zoos and circuses, memories of first kisses and near first kisses in rec-room closets and at Boy Scout sleepovers and scary movies. It’s my way of telling her that even though I haven’t experienced so many things, I have managed to have a life.
We get closer and closer to Michael’s house.
“I want to see you tomorrow,” I say.
“I want to see you, too,” she says. “But I think we both know it’s not just a matter of want.”
“I’ll hope it, then,” I tell her.
“And I’ll hope it, too.”
I want to kiss her good night, not goodbye. But when we get there, she makes no move to kiss me. I don’t want to push it and make the first move. And I don’t want to ask her, for fear that she’ll say no.
So we leave with me thanking her for the ride, and so much else going unspoken.
I don’t go straight into the house. I walk around to run out the clock more. It’s ten o’clock when I am at the front door. I access Michael to find out where the spare key is kept, but by the time I’ve found it, the door has opened and Michael’s father is there.
At first he doesn’t say a word. I stand there in the lamplight, and he stares.
“I want to beat the crap out of you,” he says, “but it looks like someone else got there first.”
My mother and sisters have been sent ahead to Hawaii. My father has stayed back for me.
In order to apologize, I have to give him some kind of explanation. I come up with one that’s as pathetic as I feel—there was a concert I had to go to, and there was just no way to tell him ahead of time. I feel awful messing up Michael’s life to such a degree, and this awfulness must come through as I speak, because Michael’s father is much less hostile than he has every right to be. I’m in no way off the hook: the change fee for the tickets will be coming out of my allowance for the next year, and when we’re in Hawaii, I may be grounded from doing anything that isn’t wedding-related. I will be getting guilt for this for the rest of my life. The only saving grace is that there were tickets available for the next day.
That night I create a memory of the best concert Michael will ever go to. It is the only thing I can think to give him to make any of it worth it.
Day 6023
Even before I open my eyes, I like Vic. Biologically female, gendered male. Living within the definition of his own truth, just like me. He knows who he wants to be. Most people our age don’t have to do that. They stay within the realm of the easy. If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.
It’s supposed to be a busy day for Vic. There’s a history test and a math test. There’s band practice, which is the thing he looks forward to the most in the day. There’s a date with a girl named Dawn.
I get up. I get dressed. I get my keys and get in my car.
But when I get to the place where I should turn off for school, I keep driving.
It’s just over a three-hour drive to Rhiannon. I’ve emailed to let her know Vic and I are coming. I didn’t give her time to reply, or to say no.
On the drive, I access pieces of Vic’s history. There are few things harder than being born into the wrong body. I had to deal with it a lot when I was growing up, but only for a day. Before I became so adaptable—so acquiescent to the way my life worked—I would resist some of the transitions. I loved having long hair, and would resent it when I woke up to find my long hair was gone. There were days I felt like a girl and days I felt like a boy, and those days wouldn’t always correspond with the body I was in. I still believed everyone when they said I had to be one or the other. Nobody was telling me a different story, and I was too young to think for myself. I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither.